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Best Known dramatist David Henry Hwang
Won an Obie Award in 1980 for his play Fresh off the Boat (Brockett, pg. 246). He's an American playwright, screenwriter, and librettist is a fluidity of identity. Won a Tony. He's a Stanford University graduate. He produced his first play in '79 while at Stanford. He graduated in 1980-81. In the years that followed he has some short plays and stories; also productions and collaborations. He wanted to show the immigrant experience from Asian Americans perspective ( all above from brittanica.com) -
East West Players (The Nations premier Asian American Theatre)
Founded in Los Angeles in 1965. There mission has been committing to raising the visibility of the Asian American experience. It has had more than 228 plays and musicals, along with over 1,000 diverse readings and workshops for actors, writers, and directors. They have a loyal audience of 70% people of color. All the cofounders wanted to create roles beyond the stereotypical parts they were offered in mainstream Hollywood. It has become a creative center in this historically significant setting. -
Chay Yew
Playwright and stage director. Plays, adaptions, a musical, and other theatre works. He has won a London Fringe Award, a playwrighting award and many awards to list. His love for theatre began while watching the Chinese Street opera before he came to the United States for college. He returned to Singapore to complete his mandatory military service, began performing, and then found freedom in playwriting-even as he came up against censorship from the government. Went to graduate school in the US. -
Frank Chin
First Asian American playwright to have his work staged in a mainstream New York theatre (Brocket, pg. 244). He founded the Asian American Theatre Workshop, which became the Asian American Theater Company in 1973. In the 1970's he developed a following as a playwright. To be on a New York stage and have your play produced is a huge accomplishment, which also his play The Chickencoop Chinaman (1972) had made it to that level and it was his first play. Fact is he's a musician (tdps.berkeley.edu). -
The Chickencoop Chinaman by Frank Chin
The Chickencoop Chinaman is a play that is about identity through dispelling stereotypes and myths. It's divided in two acts and the two scenes is in an in between place where a sequence recollecting a past obsession with a mythic figure and scenes set in a location like 1960's Pittsburgh. Where the main character works on his Asian American identity (literariness.org). It's about stereotyping and how the media is stereotyping (Brockett, pg. 244). He wanted to break those stereotypes everywhere. -
A History of Asian American Theatre
Bruce Lee, "written that from the 1990s and onwards, Asian American theatre has evolved under the influence of a new wave of younger artists who set apart. Unlike the generation of East West Players founders who sought to increase Asian American visibility in a time when there was none. Artist face a less straightforward racial and political climate. They are less concerned with number of Asian roles offered and more concerned by the quality and depth of those roles (china.usc.edu). Exclusion. -
M. Butterfly produced by David Henry Hwang
This play is focusing on race, gender, and politics. It suggests that Westerners view "Orientals" (both individuals and nations) as submissively "feminine," willing to be dominated by the aggressive, "masculine" West (Brockett, pg.246). A French spy is in love with a Chinese "women" he later found out was a man and a spy. Hwang said he assumed the man would of known it wasn't a woman. But he goes on and says, "a man can play the ideal version of a woman. Whereas a woman can only play a woman." -
Porcelain by Playwright Chay Yew
The story includes the matters of the heart conflict with barriers of race and sexuality. It is an examination of a young man's crime of passion. Triply scorned - as an Asian, a homosexual, and now a murderer. This story is about a 19 year old who confesses to shooting his lover in a public lavatory in London. It's also said to be a crime through a prism of conflicting voices: newscasts, flashbacks, and John's own recollections to a prison psychiatrist. Its a turbulent time in that day and age. -
Minneapolis Mu Performing Arts
Later named Mu Performing Arts it blends Asian and Western artistic forms; experience of Asian American culture and community (Brockett, pg. 244). The theatre celebrates and empowers Asian Americans through theatre. This theatre is a melting pot for the Asian American artists to be able to have a progressive way to express themselves to provoke, move, and challenge audiences to understand, embrace, and celebrate diversity. It's Minnesota's only Asian performing arts organization (theatermu.org) -
New Eyes Festival of new work
It's the first annual festival for the Minneapolis Mu Performing Arts. It's a series of short experimental works by Asian American new & young writers. It was directed by Dong-Il Lee and Rick Shiomi. The series at this time was Mistaken Identity, WIndow Pain, False Alarm, Woman Warrior, Conversation, Fare You Well, and Eye For One (theatermu.org). These young rising Asian American artists really could create in a theatre that lets them be themselves while the world is trying to understand more.
